HYPE VS REALITY

People love posting this chart and claiming that software engineering is dying. This is massively disingenuous for three reasons:

1) This doesn't show a precipitous drop, but rather an anomalous spike and a return to normal. Job postings are now at the same as they were in 2019.

2) This is just job postings, and just on one website. The actual number of employed engineers moved much less.

3) This spike happened in EVERY OTHER role at tech companies as well. Finance, product, marketing, people teams.

The only takeaway is that 2021-2022 was WILD for tech. Anything inferred about software engineering as a profession is hype created to farm engagement.